March 29, 2008

TB a problem once again

NST: SERI ISKANDAR: Tuberculosis (TB), a killer disease in the country in the 1950s and 1960s, is once again posing a threat.
There has been an increase in the number of TB cases in the last 10 years.
Malaysian Association of Prevention of Tuberculosis president Datuk Seri Yeop Junior Yeop Adlan said this was despite the government’s success in implementing the national TB control programme which brought the number of cases down to below 100 for every 100,000 people.
“However, in the last 10 years, the number of cases has been increasing, with 59.8 cases recorded for every 100,000 people in 1994 and 62.6 cases in 2006,” he said at the opening of the state-level World TB Day here yesterday.
Also present were Perak deputy health director (public health) Datin Dr Ranjit Kaur and Perak Tengah district health department medical officer Dr S. Elangovan.
The theme of this year’s event, “I am stopping TB”, is in line with the World Health Organisation’s vision of eliminating TB by the year 2050.
Yeop Junior, who is also MAPTB Perak branch chairman, said that an average of 16,000 cases had been recorded yearly.
Among the factors believed to have contributed to the increase are medical staff who fail to diagnose TB in patients seeking treatment for continuous cough, a symptom of the disease.
They have since been instructed to conduct a thorough examination if a patient complains of a week-long cough.